5 Reasons Why Video Is Your New Secret Weapon

The saying “out of sight, out of mind” rings true for a reason. We’re often drawn to people that we see more, and interactions don’t even have to be positive to have this effect. Psychologist Robert Zajonc studied this at length and documented this as the “mere exposure effect”, the phenomenon that people are predisposed to like the people or things that they’re exposed to more frequently.

So how does this tie into sales and marketing? If a prospect or customer sees you more often, you’re more likely to be at the top of their mind, in fact they may even think better of you and your company. But this is hard to do at scale if it means you need to meet with each one of them in person. Fortunately, videos make this task far easier. In fact, companies that use video to get in front of prospects can actually sell more. This is because video lets you convey complex information clearly and succinctly; it’s a medium that lets you show as well as tell. Most importantly, it allows you to have a face-to-face conversation with your prospects anytime (even if that face-to-face is happening asynchronously).

Videos are the next best thing to meeting someone in person and there are a number of great ways you can leverage them to drive new sales. Let’s explore five reasons why video is an increasingly important part of your marketing arsenal:

1. Create an Emotional Connection

Most of the things we remember from our childhood are on one end of the spectrum—either really exciting or really scary. This is because we are all hardwired to remember events that are more emotionally charged. Good marketers know how to leverage this fact.

You need to help people feel an emotional connection towards your brand, and there’s no medium more emotional than video. This format lets you convey so much more than mere words. Your facial expressions show people your excitement, your tone of voice tells a compelling story, and even your use of music helps people feel something when they watch your video.

Look for different ways to leverage this emotional opportunity. If you use case studies as part of your marketing mix, try a video case study. If your support team is interacting with customers via email, phone, and support ticketing, use a video to introduce those team members in a new way. You can even create an emotional connection to your product. I love this example from Zendesk, a company that builds support software.

Emotional connections are important because they help people remember you. The goal is to make people feel inspired, delighted, or joyful when they see your content. In remembering you positively, they’re more likely to buy from you, come back as a repeat customer, and even recommend you to someone else. An emotional connection will help you stay memorable and drive more sales your way.

2. Use Video in Your Emails

Once you’ve made an emotional connection, what can you do to move the relationship along? Let’s assume that you have their email address (if not, you should be asking for an email address within every video you publish)–you’re trying to send them interesting, useful content, right? You’re including a clear call to action, but how do you get people to click on it? Try using video as the call to action in the body of the email, and you’ll see higher click-to-open ratios than you’d see with any other CTA. This is because video is the most appealing call action you can put out there. People want to click play, especially if you can choose a really friendly, interesting thumbnail image. And ideally, you’re tailoring what you send them, so that they’re not seeing the same video multiple times.

3. Pay Attention to When People Watch

The third thing you have to do is take advantage of timing. It’s in your best interest to get in front of somebody at the right time, such as when they’re in the middle of their purchase evaluation process. If they’re already in the market for your kind of product, you have a higher chance of seeing the conversation go well. You don’t need to convince them that they need you; they already know it. Strike while the iron is hot! But how can your sales team tell if someone is considering you? Well, you can create alerts to let a salesperson knows when prospects watch your videos. You can even specify which videos or that you want to know when someone watches 100% of the video. For example, if someone watches your pricing video, it probably means they are pretty close to buying. If they watch all of it, that’s even more telling. If on the other hand, a viewer watches a video on your company culture, that person isn’t necessarily as close to making a buying decision.

4. Send Video Voicemails

If you’re also communicating with your prospects by phone, make it easy for them to connect with you. Let’s say your sales team is calling on prospects. Hopefully, their prospects pick up the phone. But what if they don’t? Maybe they don’t like unknown callers. Or maybe they had to go home sick, or they’re picking up their dog from the vet. Just because they’re not around when you call doesn’t mean they’re not interested. Make it easy for someone to get back in touch with you and do so in the friendliest possible way. I love this example from Sarah at BambooHR because I find myself empathizing with her. In sending this via email to her prospects, Sarah is keeping herself on their radar, establishing an emotional connection, and she’ll even know when someone watches it. She (and other salespeople) have found that this new tactic goes a long way in getting prospects to return calls and, ultimately, getting them to buy.

5. Scale Your Message

At the end of the day, we all want technology to make our jobs easier, not harder. Video lets you scale your touchpoints with customers, while marketing automation makes it easier to keep the relationship going. When you use them together, you can tackle a lot of goals that would otherwise be too time-consuming to accomplish at scale. Together, video and marketing automation enable you to scale your message (and the story you want to tell) and send the right message to the right person, at the right time. By combining the two, you’re helping point people towards the content that is most targeted to their unique needs and interests.

Using both video and marketing together is a one-two punch that can have a big impact on sales. Are you using other strategies to sell more with video? I’d love to hear about it in the comments below.

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